Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday May 07, 2014 @02:45PM
from the finding-new-ways-to-hide dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Almost every modern abusive relationship has a digital component, from cyberstalking to hacking phones, emails, and social media accounts, but women's shelters increasingly have found themselves on the defensive, ill-equipped to manage and protect their clients from increasingly sophisticated threats. Recently the Tor Project stepped in to help change that. Andrew Lewman, executive director of the project, 'thinks of the digital abuse epidemic like a doctor might consider a biological outbreak. "Step one, do not infect yourself. Step two, do not infect others, especially your co-workers. Step three, help others," he said. In the case of digital infections, like any other, skipping those first two steps can quickly turn caretakers into infected liabilities. For domestic violence prevention organizations that means ensuring their communication lines stay uncompromised. And that means establishing a base level of technology education for staff with generally little to no tech chops who might not understand the gravity of clean communication lines until faced with a situation where their own phone or email gets hacked.'"

You've clearly never been in a abusive situation. It's not so easy as "only stupid people get abused and don't do anything about it". Often they feel confined, and like they have no options; the person that they love (because usually that's how relationships like this start) is reinforcing that while simultaneously eroding self-confidence to keep them from leaving.